FAQ

Have you registered? Seriously, you must register in order to log in.
Have you been banned from the board? (A message will be displayed if you have.) If so, you should contact your Gabfest Forum Hostess to find out why.

If you have registered and are not banned and you still cannot log in then check and double-check your username and password. Usually this is the problem; if not, contact the Site Hostess so that she may check any error there may be regarding your account, and, if necessary, re-set your password.

You must register if you wish to post in any of the forums other than the Guest House, and to read the topics available to registered members only. If you do not wish to register, feel free to post in any topic in the guest house. Topic creation is only available to registered members... it is not available to guests at this time.

Registration will also give you access to additional features not available to Guest users such as Avatars of your choice, Private Messaging, E-mailing to fellow users, Usergroup Subscription, access to our Gaming Arcade and Photo Gallery, and so on...

It only takes a few minutes to register so why not join in the fun??

If you do not check the Log me in automatically box when you log in, the board will only keep you logged in for a preset time of 30 minutes. This prevents misuse of your account by anyone else.

To stay logged in, or to log in automatically on your next visit, check the box during login. This is not recommended if you access the board from a shared computer, e.g. library, internet cafe, university cluster, etc.

In your profile you will find an option Hide your online status; if you switch this on you'll only appear to board administrators or to yourself.

You will be counted as a hidden user.

Don't panic! While your password cannot be retrieved it can be reset. To do this go to the login page and click I've forgotten my password.

Follow the instructions and you should be back online in no time.

First check that you are entering the correct username and password. There is a message displayed upon registration to inform you that Activation by the Hostess is required. As this is the case for all new registrations, you may have to wait a few hours to be able to log on.

You will receive an e-mail upon your account activation as well as one notifying you that you have been added to the Free Members Group, you should have no trouble logging on after receiving both notifications.

If you did not receive the email then check that the e-mail addres you signed up with is valid. If you are sure the email address you used is valid then please e-mail the Hostes at: bruxy@uncensored-gabfest.com so that she may quickly help you solve the problem.

Please Note:
Activation by the Hostess is used in this forum to reduce the possibility of rogue users (spammers, bots, etc) abusing the board anonymously.

The most likely reasons for this are:

A) You entered an incorrect username or password; check the email you were sent when you first registered for the correct login information.

B) Your account has been de-activated or deleted by the Site Hostess for some reason. This might happen during site maintenance if your post count is zero and you have not logged in for a long period of time.

You can e-mail: bruxy@uncensored-gabfest.com to find out what happened, if your account needs to be activated, easy and quick to fix, if your account is no longer in existence, you simply need to register again and get involved in the discussions going on in our diverse topics.

All Registered members settings are stored in the database.

To alter them go to your Profile Control Panel by clicking the Profile link in the Users menu in the page header.

If you are a Basic Plan or Carte Blanche member you may alter the Board Layout and other customisable features to suit your liking through the Preferences link you will also find in the Users menu.

Please note:
There is a preferences section in the Profile Control Panel, which is a different thing altogether and available to all members.

When you first join Gabfest, you will most likely see the time used in the board's default settings GMT +1 (Madrid, Lisbon, Paris) You can change this inside your Profile Control Panel in the Preferences section.

Please note that changing the timezone, like most settings, can only be done by registered users.

If you are sure you have set the timezone correctly and the time is still different, the most likely answer is daylight savings time, aka summer time on some parts of the planet.

This board was not originally designed to handle the changeovers between standard and daylight time, but has since been altered to do so... if you continue to have this problem please contact bruxy@uncensored-gabfest.com or post your problem in the appropriate Board Q&A topic. If there is no topic started for this particular problem, you may create a new one to address the issue.

Gabfest is set up in English only.

If you need to have the main workings of the board in another language to help you in navigation through the site, please make a request for this to the Site Hostess... There are many modifications on the board that would require translations to do this, feel free to help out with that! :D

More information on language packs can be found at the phpBB Group website (see link at bottom of pages)

There may be two images below a username when viewing posts. The first is an image associated with your rank; generally these take the form of stars or blocks indicating how many posts you have made or your status on the forums. (this is not enabled at this time but will be in the future)

Below this may be a larger image known as an Avatar that you choose to depict yourself in the forums. Gabfest has a large selection in the Avatar gallery that you may choose from.

While remote Avatars (slows the site down too much) and Avatar uploading are not enabled at this time, you may send any Avatar that you'd like to use to the site Hostess via e-mail and she will resize it if necessary and add it to the Members section of the Avatar Gallery.

For more info on Avatars please read the topic 'Avatar and Smilies Uploads' in the Q&A on Board Functions topic and post your requests and questions there.

Ranks are created and administered by the Gabfest Hostess and members cannot directly change these settings.

Ranks currently on this board are Hostess, only for the board administrator, Moderator for those who help to keep the forums tidy, and special membership ranks for Carte Blanche & Basic Plan Members who have also have special privileges.

Gabfest doesn't use any rank for post amounts, so please do not abuse the board by posting unnecessarily just to increase your postcount, there's no prize for this.

Then you are probably a Guest on the board or have not logged in. Only registered users can send email to other members via the built-in email form.

This is to prevent malicious use of the email system by anonymous users and to protect the privacy of our members.

Easy -- click the relevant button on either the forum or topic screens.

Creating new topics is not enabled for Guests, and Guest posting is limited to The Guest House, and some, but not all forums are readable by non-registered visitors. Also, some forums are restricted to view only, read only status depending on the user's Membership and Group associations.

The facilities available to you in any given topic or forum are listed at the bottom right of the screens on those pages (the You can post new topics, You can vote in polls, etc. list)

Unless you are the board admin or forum moderator you can only edit or delete your own posts. You can edit a post by clicking the edit button for the relevant post.

If someone has already replied to the post, you will find a small piece of text output below the post when you return to the topic that lists the date and time of your last edit and the number of times you edited it.

This will not appear if the no one has replied prior to your submitting the edited post; it also will not appear if the Hostess or a Moderator has edited the post, though they should leave a message saying what they altered and why.

This is usually not necessry as most editing is only done to correct a BBCode tag, fix run-on text or links that stretch the entire page necesitating sideways scrolling or something similar.... but really, aside from occasional aesthetic adjustments, deleting of double posts, deleting of posts where board funtion problems have been resolved making the posts confusing and obsolete or occasional topic splitting & merging (especially moving posts on board functions out of the discussions and into the 'How Things Work Here' section), there is really no post editing done on this site... after all, it is uncensored!!!

Please note that normal users cannot delete a post once someone has replied.

You can add a signature via your Profile Control Panel. Just type it into the Signature text input box and click submit.

You can also add a signature by default to all your posts by checking the appropriate radio box in your profile, but you can still prevent a signature being added to individual posts by un-checking the add signature box on the posting form. In the QuickPost form, you'll need to click on the 'more options' link at the bottom of the table to do this.

Creating a poll is easy -- when you post a new topic (or edit the first post of a topic, if you have permission) you should see a Add Poll form below the main posting box. If you cannot see this then you probably do not have rights to create polls. You should enter a title for the poll and then at least two options -- to set an option type in the poll question and click the Add option button. You can also set a time limit for the poll, 0 being an infinite amount. There will be a limit to the number of options you can list, which is set by the board administrator

As with posts, polls can only be edited by the original poster, a moderator, or board administrator. To edit a poll, click the first post in the topic, which always has the poll associated with it. If no one has cast a vote then users can delete the poll or edit any poll option. However, if people have already placed votes only moderators or administrators can edit or delete it; this is to prevent people rigging polls by changing options mid-way through a poll

Some forums are private and limited to the Forum Owner's groups, who's members are seleted by them. Only CB members have private forums and journals as well as private Albums in the Photo Gallery.

There are also Public Forums with View Only and Read Only restrictions on them for Free members, though some may be open to posting on a scheduled basis.

There are also Groups that are open to all to join so that they may read and/or post in Forums that other members may not wish to see... thus they are View Only, by choice, for those who aren't interested, but have Read Only or Read Post & Vote abilities enabled for those who are.

For details on Groups and Forum Permissions please see the topics 'Take it Outside' and 'Membership Plans' which can be found in the Forums in the section 'How Things Work Here'.

Only registered users can vote in polls so as to prevent spoofing of results. If you have registered and still cannot vote then you probably do not have appropriate access rights.

BBCode is a special implementation of HTML. Whether you can use BBCode is determined by the administrator. You can also disable it on a per post basis from the posting form. BBCode itself is similar in style to HTML: tags are enclosed in square braces [ and ] rather than < and > and it offers greater control over what and how something is displayed. For more information on BBCode see the guide which can be accessed from the posting page.

That depends on whether the administrator allows you to; they have complete control over it. If you are allowed to use it, you will probably find only certain tags work. This is a safety feature to prevent people from abusing the board by using tags which may destroy the layout or cause other problems. If HTML is enabled you can disable it on a per post basis from the posting form.

Smileys, or Emoticons, are small graphical images which can be used to express some feeling using a short code, e.g. :) means happy, :( means sad. The full list of emoticons can be seen via the posting form. Try not to overuse smileys, though, as they can quickly render a post unreadable and a moderator may decide to edit them out or remove the post altogether.

Images can indeed be shown in your posts. However, there is no facility at present for uploading images directly to this board. Therefore you must link to an image stored on a publicly accessible web server, e.g. http://www.some-unknown-place.net/my-picture.gif. You cannot link to pictures stored on your own PC (unless it is a publicly accessible server) nor to images stored behind authentication mechanisms such as Hotmail or Yahoo mailboxes, password-protected sites, etc. To display the image use either the BBCode [img] tag or appropriate HTML (if allowed).

Announcements often contain important information and you should read them as soon as possible. Announcements appear at the top of every page in the forum to which they are posted. Whether or not you can post an announcement depends on the permissions required, which are set by the administrator.

Sticky topics appear below any announcements in viewforum and only on the first page. They are often quite important so you should read them where possible. As with announcements the board administrator determines what permissions are required to post sticky topics in each forum.

Locked topics are set this way by either the forum moderator or board administrator. You cannot reply to locked topics and any poll contained inside is automatically ended. Topics may be locked for many reasons.

Administrators are people assigned the highest level of control over the entire board. These people can control all facets of board operation which include setting permissions, banning users, creating usergroups or moderators, etc. They also have full moderator capabilities in all the forums.

Moderators are individuals (or groups of individuals) whose job it is to look after the running of the forums from day to day. They have the power to edit or delete posts and lock, unlock, move, delete and split topics in the forum they moderate. Generally moderators are there to prevent people going off-topic or posting abusive or offensive material.

Usergroups are a way in which board administrators can group users. Each user can belong to several groups (this differs from most other boards) and each group can be assigned individual access rights. This makes it easy for administrators to set up several users as moderators of a forum, or to give them access to a private forum, etc.

To join a usergroup click the usergroup link on the page header (dependent on template design) and you can then view all usergroups. Not all groups are open access -- some are closed and some may even have hidden memberships. If the board is open then you can request to join it by clicking the appropriate button. The user group moderator will need to approve your request; they may ask why you want to join the group. Please do not pester a group moderator if they turn your request down -- they will have their reasons.

Usergroups are initially created by the board administrator who also assigns a board moderator. If you are interested in creating a usergroup then your first point of contact should be the administrator, so try dropping them a private message.

There are three reasons for this; you are not registered and/or not logged on, the board administrator has disabled private messaging for the entire board, or the board administrator has prevented you individually from sending messages. If it is the latter case you should try asking the administrator why.

In the future we will be adding an ignore list to the private messaging system. For now, though, if you keep receiving unwanted private messages from someone, inform the board administrator -- they have the power to prevent a user from sending private messages at all.

We are sorry to hear that. The email form feature of this board includes safeguards to try to track users who send such posts. You should email the board administrator with a full copy of the email you received and it is very important this include the headers (these list details of the user that sent the email). They can then take action.

This software (in its unmodified form) is produced, released and is copyrighted phpBB Group. It is made available under the GNU General Public License and may be freely distributed; see link for more details

This software was written by and licensed through phpBB Group. If you believe a feature needs to be added then please visit the phpbb.com website and see what the phpBB Group has to say. Please do not post feature requests to the board at phpbb.com, as the Group uses sourceforge to handle tasking of new features. Please read through the forums and see what, if any, our position may already be for features and then follow the procedure given there.

You should contact the administrator of this board. If you cannot find who that is, you should first contact one of the forum moderators and ask them who you should in turn contact. If still get no response you should contact the owner of the domain (do a whois lookup) or, if this is running on a free service (e.g. yahoo, free.fr, f2s.com, etc.), the management or abuse department of that service. Please note that phpBB Group has absolutely no control and cannot in any way be held liable over how, where or by whom this board is used. It is absolutely pointless contacting phpBB Group in relation to any legal (cease and desist, liable, defamatory comment, etc.) matter not directly related to the phpbb.com website or the discrete software of phpBB itself. If you do email phpBB Group about any third party use of this software then you should expect a terse response or no response at all.